Day 36 - Pushy?

I had never been one of those mothers. You know, "those mothers". The kind that drive all the nurses crazy. I had heard the front office staff at the NICU comment that after about a month, NICU moms start to go crazy. I was proud of myself that I had learned all I could, but that I still trusted the doctors and nurses to do what they thought was best. This...I'm afraid, came to an end somewhere around this time.


When Jonah had been out of surgery less than 48 hours, they started talking about moving him out of the NICU up to the 7th floor again. No, I said, he's not ready! He's still on pain meds, he's still on TPN (IV food, not breastmilk), he's still on oxygen. Please wait, I said!


Second thing the doctor's and I disagreed on was whether we could feed Jonah. They wanted to wait for him to have a bowel movement. I argued that we were NPO (no feedings) for so long before surgery due to it being pushed back several times that he had nothing to poop out! They wanted to put in a PICC line (a central IV threaded all the way to his heart) to feed him a stronger TPN solution. I, quite simply, disagreed. I questioned and probed, asked "what if's" but in the end, agreed to sign the release for the PICC line. They were the experts after all. They had poked him so many times for perifial IV lines that they ended up having to put the PICC line in his head!

On the other topic I had more success however. No 7th floor for Jonah yet. They continued to ask every day, but I held them off until Jonah was 5 days post surgery. At that point, they called one morning before I came in and told me an emergency had come up and they had needed Jonah's bed, so they moved him up to the 7th floor in the middle of the night. I didn't quite buy it, I think they moved him while I wasn't there to avoid the confrontation, but it didn't matter as by then I felt Jonah was much stronger. I still liked it better in the NICU, but I felt his condition was more stable so I didn't protest too strenuously as I had in the beginning.